Ex-Tabula Rasa

A Jolly Good Tagging

First, I must apologise for the lateness of this post. I was tagged by the lovely Mathcat at the weekend and haven’t been able to get around to doing anything about it. I have a little bit of spare time now, so I shall do my best. First off, the rules.

This tag is to get to know the person behind the blog better. As with any tagging game, there are rules:

Rule 1: Post the rules.

Rule 2: Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and then make 11 new ones.

Rule 3: Tag 11 people and link them to your post.

Rule 4: Let them know you’ve tagged them.

Questions from mathcat345, which I will now answer to the best of my ability:

1. What were your favorite books from childhood? When I was 10 I tried to read the Bible from beginning to end. I got as far as Numbers, which is a bit like reading a phone directory, but with less plot. After I threw the Good Book down in disgust, I probably went back to some Roald Dahl (Matilda was my favourite), or some Choose Your Own Damn Adventure books.

2. Who was the first well known person on whom you developed a crush? What made you crush on this person? I believe that was Wonder Woman. I wish I could remember why. Let’s say it was her satin tights.

3. What are you favorite things to put in a salad, including type of dressing? Avocado and shrimp belong in every single salad there is. If you offer me a salad that has neither shrimp nor avocado I will laugh and ask where the television cameras are. I have no preferred dressing.

4. What is the most daring thing you have done up until this point in your life (because you can do tons of daring stuff after this)? Picking up and moving to Japan for an adventure.

5. Do you prefer to have quiet in the home, with just the sounds of nature, or do you always need to have music or the television playing? It depends what I am doing, and whether or not the sound of rain or childish laughter can be heard from outside.

6. What is one tradition you have created as an adult or still follow from your childhood? Before embarking upon a journey of some distance (for example, going on holiday), my wife and I will always take a photo of the two of us together. This is partly for tradition, partly in case of supernaturally-induced memory loss.

7. Do you have any fears/phobias that your friends would think are completely ridiculous? If so, what are they? Finding a disembodied finger in a pint of milk. That’s why I always buy two-litre jugs.

8. What is one item on your bucket list? To kill a man with my bare hands.

9. Who would you like to meet, if there were no obstacles to prevent this from happening? Wonder Woman. And then she’d wrap me up in her lasso of truth and she’d get a bit weirded out by the stuff I was saying and then she’d have to unlasso me.

10. If you had to choose, would you rather parachute or scuba dive? Why? Parachute, because I even get freaked out snorkelling in sheltered coves.

11. Sometimes, songs get stuck in our heads. What song do you hate to find swirling around in your head? It’s a song I invented myself in my head entitled “I’ll kill you with my face.” The lyrics are “I’ll kill you with my face (x3)/Let’s have a race.” There’s a later verse where I rhyme the words “Jesus” and “Cheeses”. It always gets stuck in my head when I have a shower.

I have to now write 11 questions, which are as follows:

1. A Bad Man forces you to list all the animals that you think are more cute than ducklings and then makes you explain to a real duckling why you think these other animals are cuter than it. What do you do afterwards to ease the guilt at undermining the self-confidence of a duckling?

2. You are designing the headquarters/main worshipping venue of your new religion. How many cubicles do you put in each gender’s bathrooms and why?

3. What’s grey and would kill you if it fell on you out of a tree?

4. What’s your favourite book cover?

5. If you had to choose between not being on fire and losing every scarf you ever buy within six minutes of buying it, what would you choose? EXPLAIN WHY

6. Hello Kitty has been found guilty of murdering her feline companion Charmy Kitty. The government is making you perform the execution. What method would you choose?

7. What time is love? What day? What month? What year?

8. How long do you think it would take you to learn semaphore?

9. Can you play any musical instruments? If so, why? If not, omit this part and go to question ten.

10. You experience a mysterious repeated day phenomenon like Bill Murray in the film Groundhog Day. How long do you think it would be before your hi-jinks turn to nihilism due to the realisation that nothing matters and none of your actions will have consequences?

11. How is babby formed?

I am tagging the following 11 Tumblr Users to answer these questions: Barack Obama, Lapham’s Quarterly, Steelopus, Girldetective, RARtastic, The Economist Magazine, Do-over, Tom Oatmeal, Ron Bailey, Nicky36, HOTGURL24x8y00wb31